THE LONE RANGER Rides Again! - Pen & Ink Artwork!

Here's a Lone Ranger piece of art I did the other day as a warm up. I just got the The Lone Ranger: 75th Anniversary - Seasons 1 and 2 from Amazon and it's a great set that features the first two complete seasons of the original TV Show! It's expensive, but worth it!Clayton Moore was great in the part! This piece or art was penciled on cheap paper and then I taped it to the back of a good piece of art paper and 'light tabled' it for the inking stage. All told it was done in about two hours. Enjoy!

THE RIFLEMAN! Chuck Conners Conceptual Art From The Late 90's

Here is a piece I did of actor Chuck Conners from THE RIFLEMAN, which ran from 1958 to 1963 on TV! This is a piece featuring the father and son team of Lucas McCain and his son, Mark! Done in the same vein and product line as the GUNSMOKE stuff, it wasn't used in the end. I like the original though. It was inked with a brush on tan Canson art paper around a 12" x 12" size and then it was colored in full color (instead of sepia tones) with pastels. The reason I did all this work on the tan colored art paper was so that it simulated an old west feel to it. Enjoy!

CHESTER And FESTUS From GUNSMOKE! More Conceptual Art From The Late 90's

Here's two more portraits I did for GUNSMOKE product, which was never produced, by The Mint in late '98-'99. Since I showed you Marshal Dillon in my earlier posts, now it's time to show you his sidekick/deputies...Chester Goode and Festus Haggen! Actor Dennis Weaver played the part of Chester Goode for the first ten years of the GUNSMOKE TV show and he was nominated for an Emmy in 1958 and in 1959 for his fine work on GUNSMOKE. He won the coveted Emmy in 1959. On the radio show version of GUNSMOKE, Chester's full name was Chester Wesley Proudfoot. When the TV was in early pre-production, Chester's last name was changed to Goode and Dennis Weaver gave him a physical limp, one which he never had on the radio show.

Chester was now suddenly gone at the beginning of the 11th season, which was weird because they never explained in the show what happened to or why Chester had in fact left (Weaver had left to pursue other acting opportunities such as McCloud), he was then replaced over time by Festus Haggen. Actor Ken Curtis went all out in portraying the great mountain man who helped Marshal Dillon on his latter adventures. He also added some comic relief in spots to lighten the seriousness of a given episode and played the part till the end of the series in 1975. Both of these pieces are inked with a brush on tan Canson art paper and then colored with pastels. A white colored pencil was used for highlights. I did these fairly big since I knew they were going to get severely reduced down in production and I wanted to keep the quality as high as I could. Also, as a little known tidbit, that all these pieces would have been burned in a hot steam press device that they had at The Mint. This device was kind of like a steam press for doing iron-on t-shirts and it burned any artwork to give it a weathered and old Wanted poster look to it as it would singe the edges. The thing about it was that you only got ONE change to do it right so your timing had to be perfect. Kinda like watching a piece of toast in the toaster oven. I honestly was scared to use it and thankfully they pulled the plug on the products so that I wouldn't have to deal with accidentally destroying my own work. I did have some test pieces to play with but I was nervous with them as well! Hahaha! Enjoy!

MARSHAL MATT DILLON From GUNSMOKE Final Art!

Here is the final version of the GUNSMOKE prelim pencil sketch piece I posted a few days back. This was the final art for it and I still love it as I have the original here. It's a pen and ink drawing on tan Canson art paper and it was colored with pastels. A white colored pencil was used for highlights. Done for a proposed idea for The Franklin Mint, but was never used since they pulled the plug on the entire line of Old West products. Here it is from the Neely archives to be seen for the first time in almost 10 years! Enjoy!

MARSHAL MATT DILLON from GUNSMOKE! Old Pencil Sketch Prelim!

Here's a pencil sketch of the great James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, the main lead character on TV's greatest show ever... GUNSMOKE! It's my favorite show of all time though I wasn't around when it had originally aired. I've got video tapes and DVD's of the TV show and audio tapes, CD's and MP3's of the radio show here. Great morality tale stories that had characters with real depth! The radio show version of GUNSMOKE (1952-1961) came before the TV version (1955-1975) and that was just as incredible with William Conrad playing the part of Marshal Dillon.

I did quite a few GUNSMOKE (and other old western TV show) pieces for The Franklin Mint in the late 90's for a proposed old west series of items that never got past the conceptual design stage. I still have most of all my originals that I did for these products. They are some of my finest work and I kept them since I loved them so much. A few are framed and hanging around the house here. This piece was a rough early pencil version of Marshal Dillon that I drew for one such product design. I'll post more soon! Enjoy!